11 Short Films About College
by wizened cynic
Summary: PART FIVE. The Breakfast Club, Grace-style. Involves a lot of breaking and entering.
1. 1 of 11

**Title: **11 Short Films About College (1/11)

**Disclaimer:** I don't own this show. I just like to manipulate its characters, and sometimes make them gay.

**Notes:** I think my time is better spent writing fic than studying for my Sociology exam. There will be more parts to this, because I like to procrastinate. (I know it says there are 11, but I'm not trustworthy.) There will probably be an annotated version of this on my livejournal or my website later, since I like footnotes.

o o o o o

For Grace, college is a one way ticket out of Arcadia, and not very much else. She isn't against _learning_ per se, but as she sees it, formal systems of education are inherently racist and sexist, and why should her professors have power over her, just because they went to school for an extra ten years and wrote hundred-page theses that nobody, except for maybe their mothers, has ever read?

Choosing a college is a pain to begin with. The red states are automatically ruled out, California is out of the question (because, dude - sun, sand, _and_ Schwarzenegger), and she isn't going anywhere near the Bible Belt. That leaves a handful of schools in New England, and she settles on a university in Boston she feels she can live with.

Only _now_ she has to continuously explain that she didn't choose to go there because it's near MIT, and everyone knows who's going to MIT next year. Grace is not, and will never be, someone whose choice of universities depends on said universities' proximity to her boyfriend (so, yes, Luke is her boyfriend, but she'll never admit it out loud). She makes that clear to Luke, but he's already given up pretending not to smile about it. He wears this big, dorky grin on his face and is probably plotting some disturbing white picket fence crap, and Grace doesn't know whether she wants to punch him in the face or stick her tongue down his throat.

Joan whines about it, of course, because that's what Joan does. "I can't believe you're going so far away," she keeps saying, as if repeating it over and over will stop it from happening. "It's so _final_, Grace." And in August, when she and Luke go to see Grace off, she cries all the way to the airport, manages to hold it together for about ten minutes, and then breaks down again at the gate.

"Email, Girardi," Grace snaps at her, but more softly than usual. "Technology isn't completely useless." Grace has spent much of her adolescence making girls at Arcadia High cry, but when Joan does it, it's extra annoying. Unnerving. Sad.

To Luke, she utters a warning, "If you're going to give me any of that _distance makes the heart grow fonder_ crap, I'll seriously have to maim you."

He fakes a look of abhorrence and says, "I was just going to give you this." He hands her a copy of _The Portable Nietzsche_. "So you can have something to make fun of on the plane."

Instead of telling him that she always has something to make fun of on the plane, she stands on her tiptoes and puts her arms around him. He smells like sandalwood and Irish Spring soap, and she wonders if she will be able to carry some of that away with her. _God_, she better not be turning into one of those PDA freaks. Damn Nerd Boy and his ability to compel her to do insipid teenage-girl things.

"Call me when you get there," Joan says as she dissolves into sobs again. Her hand reaches out for Grace's, and for some reason, Grace's throat begins to swell and ache. Grace looks away and lets Joan hold her hand for longer than she usually lets anybody. When the PA system announces that her flight is ready for boarding, she tries to think of happy thoughts: her twelfth birthday, when her father got her that skateboard; the science fair with the rail gun that nearly took the whole place down; the look on Price's face when he found out that she'd been awarded a full scholarship to her (albeit inevitably fascist) post-secondary institute of choice.

She can't think of Joan's attempts at cheerleading, or her Bat Mitzvah, or Luke's sixteenth birthday, because she is not the type of person who gets onto an airplane and starts losing it while other passengers stare and wonder whether they should ignore her or offer their own version of humanistic therapy. She just isn't.

So she jams her headphones over her ears, scowls at the child who keeps peering behind his seat at her, and tries to focus on something more pleasant. (Since when did she become this glass half-full kind of person? She blames the Girardis.) In a few hours, she will meet her new roommate, whom she already dislikes because the girl is a Type A-personality who ended her only letter to Grace with "So, what did you get on your SATs?" In a few days, she will probably discover that course descriptions lie and she has inadvertently signed up for a class that requires a lot of human interaction. In a few months she will learn that Boston has many things the white-bread suburbia doesn't, but it doesn't have Luke and it doesn't have Joan, and as much as it begrudges Grace to even consider it, Arcadia will have its merits in the meantime.

She will email Luke and Joan about all of this (except the last one) and complain. She may even call, once that newness has rubbed off and it won't hurt as much to hear their voices. She will not, however, allow Luke to re-negotiate their terms of correspondence, which states clearly that they will only exchange phone calls twice a week. She will not become one of those girls who call their boyfriends sixteen times a day or whose boyfriends call sixteen times a day, because college is not about that. It's about angst, and overdue papers, and profs who teach you one thing in class and test you on something completely unrelated on your midterms.

Grace thinks about this, and she knows she will be all right, even if her nose is burning and her eyes sting, and shut up, she's **_not_** crying. It's the poor lighting and the perfume the woman sitting next to her is wearing, an offensive mixture of hollyberry and industrial air freshener that's killing her sinus.

It hurts, but it's a good kind of hurt. Not the kind that breaks you into pieces and buries you in a dark place. It's more like jumping off the highest point of the jungle gym when you're little, and your ankles hurt like hell afterward, and maybe it stings because you've scraped your knees on the gravel. It hurts, but it's good because you learn that the fall doesn't kill you. It tells you that you're real, that you're alive, and maybe you're a little bit broken somewhere, but there are people in the distance who can hold you back together.

o o o o o


	2. 2 of 11

**Notes: **I forgot to mention earlier that the installments of this story are not necessarily in chronological order. I may jump back and forth in time, because I am schizophrenic in that way. The annotated version of Part One is up on my website, which you should visit, since FFNET always screws up my formatting and makes everything look ugly. For the record, I live in Western Canada and am of Asian descent, and therefore I know very little about cold, geography of the eastern United States, and Jewish holidays. Please suspend your disbeliefs for the time being, or if you want toeducate me about it, bring on the emails.

o o o o o

The one thing about college that Grace will never get used to is the cold.

They didn't warn her about it on the college brochures, but that's a given. Those things are fucking propaganda, almost on par with the posters used to recruit soldiers in World War Two.

This is the type of cold that you anticipate, arming yourself with blankets and sweaters, but sneaks up on you nevertheless and hits you full in the face when you aren't looking.

This is the type of cold that almost, _almost_ makes Grace wonder if she was too hasty in ruling out California. After all, Stanford's not SoCal, right?

This is the type of cold that makes Grace want to skip her classes and burrow in bed, only that would be futile. Her roommate, Caroline, insists on keeping their window open all hours of the day, regardless of rain, shine, or blizzard.

"We're fucking freezing here," Grace says, stifling the urge to wring Caroline's neck as Caroline opens the window twenty seconds after she closes it.

"You are. I'm not."

"Your lips are blue. You're practically hypothermic. Not that I care, since you obviously want to go for the Violet Beauregarde look."

"Doctors say that breathing recycled air is not good for us," Caroline explains. "If we keep the window closed, our room will fill up with carbon dioxide and dust, and who knows if the radiator is releasing toxic or flammable gases?"

"Well, I guess we can find out by lighting a match and seeing if it explodes."

Caroline frowns as she contemplates this. "Speaking of fire hazards, Grace, I need to talk to you about your menorah."

"I don't have a menorah."

"_In the event _that you get a menorah. I'm respectful of other religions and I understand that this is very important to your faith, but don't you think it's a little dangerous to keep a lit candle in our room? What if our books catch on fire? I keep a first edition of Hemingway by my bed, you know."

"If that happens, we can always throw the book out the open window and into the ten-inch snowbank outside."

"Don't be puerile, Grace. A little cold won't kill you. Thoreau lived in the wilderness and it didn't kill him. We should learn to live in harmony with nature."

So says the girl whose prized possessions include a brand-new BMW and her Blackberry.

Grace ignores Caroline's desire for the room temperature to remain sub-zero, as she ignores most of the things Caroline says, and closes the window every time she sees it open. Caroline opens the window every time she sees it closed, and a week before Hanukkah begins, the window jams itself halfway open.

"You are fucking kidding me," Grace mutters to the window, a testament to how delirious from cold she's become. Maybe Caroline wins this round, but she is _so_ getting the menorah (of course, she will never tell her father, who is still trying to convince her to come home during the Non-denominational Winter Break).

She bundles up in her thickest clothes and a patchwork quilt her friend/case study Sophie has "borrowed" from last year's drama production of _Little House on the Prairie_ (Sophie has a penchant for taking things from various places and relocating them elsewhere on campus. She insists it is not petty thievery, because she always returns them. Grace isn't thrilled with having to handle stolen goods, but beggars can't be choosers, and beggars most definitely cannot call their suppliers on their kleptomania). She makes a nest in her bed with her books and laptop computer, and tries to study while exposing as little skin to cold air as possible.

When Luke messages her five times in a forty-second interval, she violently stabs the caps-lock button on her keyboard and types, "JUST ONE MINUTE, FREAK. MY FINGERS ARE FROZEN."

He types back, "It's cold in Arcadia, too," and Graces wishes he were here in Boston so that she could teach him a thing or two about what being cold means.

Maybe she just wishes he were here, but that is another topic altogether.

o o o o o

The electronic beep wakes Grace from a study-induced semi-consciousness. Murmuring a couple of Hebrew words her father wishes he's never taught her, she trails her hand along the floor and finds her cellphone amid a pile of rubble. "Speak."

"Are you cold?"

"Who _is_ this?"

"Very funny, Grace. I know you have caller ID." Joan sounds more annoyed than usual, even though _she_ is the one doing the calling. "I probably have a special ringtone too."

"I don't do ringtones, Girardi."

"I thought your phone had a special ringtone for Luke. How come he gets one and I don't?"

"I'm hanging up."

"No, wait! So Luke said you were cold and I'm wondering if you want a sweater. Have I told you this? I'm taking up knitting again. It's not exactly my idea, but I had all this leftover yarn in my house, and somebody told me to finish what I started. Which I did, only I had to buy new yarn, and I bought too much, so I thought I could knit you something since you're freezing and all."

Grace closes her eyes. Talking to Joan at seven in the morning and on an empty stomach always gives her a headache. "Whatever, Girardi. I don't care."

"Great! What color do you want?"

"Pink."

Grace swears she hears Joan drop her phone and narrowly catch it before it hit the floor. "Really?"

"No! Are you on drugs? Nothing bright, nothing pastel, just do whatever you want without giving me an aneurysm, okay?"

"Fine. Fine. I'll start working on it today in Calculus. If I knit fast enough, I think I can get it done by next week."

"Don't hurt yourself over it."

"Oh, don't worry. I'm getting really good at this. I'm learning to make sleeves tomorrow."

o o o o o

Luke calls a few minutes later, and no, he does not have a special ringtone.

"Are you cold?"

"Your sister and I covered this three minutes ago."

"Yeah, Joan's really into this whole knitting thing. Anyway, I need your opinion on this: will it be deemed hideously inappropriate and stalker-like if I sent you my old winter jacket?"

Grace tries very hard not to smile. "Yeah. Kind of."

"But you see, I outgrew it last year and I really have no use for it. And you're cold, so I thought it could keep you warm. I mean, I can't fly over and fix your window ---actually, I can't fix windows, not very good with tools--- so I thought this could be at least something. And it's made of synthetic materials, so no birds were harmed."

"Whatever, Girardi. I don't care. Are you done here?"

"I guess." He takes a deep breath and says in a small voice, "We're not celebrating Hanukkah together this year."

"Dude, you're _Catholic_."

"_Grace_."

"If you're done, I have to go for breakfast now." It takes a lot of will and effort to get out of bed and tackle the ten-foot distance from her dorm to the cafeteria.

Luke hangs up, and Grace tosses her phone back onto the floor. She envisions pancakes and hot coffee (which, in her imagination, taste far better than what the cafeteria actually serves). She is hungry, but on second thought, she buries herself back in bed and tries to pretend she were in Ecuador or other places near the equator where stupid roommates get eaten by wild animals.

But she is so far away from Ecuador and even Maryland, and she is so cold.

o o o o o

Luke's parcel arrives first, a large box that clutters up Grace's half of her prison-cell dorm room. She originally left the box in the hallway, but after another lecture about fire hazards from Caroline, she is now keeping it in her room and deliberately refusing to flatten it or make it smaller in any way.

Even though Luke has outgrown the jacket, it is still almost two sizes too big for Grace. It reaches her knees and hides her fingers with a good inch of fabric. It smells like detergent--- probably courtesy of Helen Girardi. Thank God, because it would not only be disgusting to wear something laced with another person's sweat and dead skin cells, but also far too creepy and rabid girlfriend-like.

For practical purposes, Grace abandons the quilt for the jacket, and uses it only to cover her legs and keep her toes from frostbite. She wears it to sleep, wears it to class, wears it to sleep _in_ class, and just as she stops thinking it as Luke's jacket and starts thinking it as her own, she notices something when she shoves a folded-up flyer (Toga party tonight! Free BZZR and lesbians!) into her pocket one morning.

She reaches in and discovers a glass marble the color of a 7-Up bottle when the sun hits it just right. It is accompanied by a folded Post It, which says, "The color reminds me of your eyes. Please don't hurt me for saying that."

She rummages in the other pockets, and produces eight small gifts. An article from the school paper telling the tragic incident of Mr. Price's being attacked by a live turkey during Thanksgiving; a small silver slinky to remind her of Physics class; and, in true geek form, a pencil with _Massachusetts Institute of Technology_ embossed on it, to remind her of the future.

Grace waits for two days before she calls Luke to thank him, and her way of saying thanks is asking, "So, do you plan to spin the dreidel as well?"

"No, but I _have_ been reading up on the Maccabees."

"Dude, you're turning more Jewish than me, and I'm the rabbi's daughter."

"I'm glad you liked them, Grace."

"Who says I liked them?"

Grace can almost see that, hundreds of miles away, Luke is smiling too.

o o o o o

Joan's package arrives a few days after Luke's, a smaller box that fits on top of the big box and makes Caroline's eyebrows twitch. Inside, Grace finds a gray sweater, made from warm, scratchy wool. She is no expert when it comes to knitting, but she is sure there shouldn't be so many holes. One sleeve is slightly longer than the other, and the wool makes her neck itch, but Grace puts it on anyway, hiding it under the jacket. It keeps her warm.

There are also two scarves, traditional Joan scarves, the long, ever-winding kind that threatens to trip her over and gets caught in doorways. They are folded neatly and placed under the sweater, and at the very bottom of the box, there is a message: **Sorry that the sweater took so long. Hope you haven't died of frostbite. Extra scarves to keep you warm--- don't worry, I didn't knit them. Mom is sending you cookies. They're in the shape of Christmas trees, I hope you don't mind. **

Grace eats the cookies for lunch and theological differences aside, they are the best damn cookies she has ever tasted. She wraps one of the scarves around her neck and heads off to Linguistics. Midway through another soul-draining lecture on polysynthetic languages, she holds one end of the scarf to her nose and breathes deep. She breathes in traces of the blackberry perfume Joan always puts too much on, and something else that smells like Joan herself --- something sweet but not overtly so, and not really noticeable until it engulfs you completely, suddenly. Smacks you in the face like the cold, only in a good way.

The scarves eventually attract Caroline's attention, seeing as that it has been two weeks, and Miss Can't Breathe Recycled Air herself has been caught attempting to shut the window whenever she thinks Grace isn't looking.

"You don't need two scarves at the same time," she says, eyeing the box at the foot of Grace's bed. "And you've already got that winter coat. It will be the charitable thing to do for you to---"

"Harmony with nature, Thoreau," says Grace. And if Caroline even dreams of touching her scarves, or her coat, or even her maybe-stolen quilt, Grace will rip her first edition of Hemingway apart and feed it to her.

Caroline scowls and disappears, most probably to the library, possibly to a church, where the fire hazards will, if Grace is lucky enough, drive her to a mental breakdown. Grace gives the open window a satisfied look and returns to her books. When Caroline returns, she is already in bed, snug and warm under her coat and blankets.

"I'm hiring someone to fix the window tomorrow," Caroline tells her. "The maintenance people here won't come until spring. You're paying for half of it. I'll send you the bill later."

"I'm keeping the menorah," Grace says, even though Hanukkah is over. The polyester of her jacket makes a shifting sound as she turns her back to her roommate. Wrapping one of Joan's scarves around her hand, she gently rubs the material between her thumb and index finger, back and forth, over and over, until she falls asleep.

o o o o o


	3. 3 of 11

**Notes:** Kind of short this round, and no dialogue because I'm feeling cranky. And dude, all you who reviewed? You guys **so** rock.

o o o o o

Grace doesn't make friends. At most, she makes acquaintances, and even those come few and far between. From previous experience, she has learned that there are very few people in the world she finds tolerable, and she is quite sure that she has met most of them already.

Case in point, high school was a hellish prison of sorts, and of all the sociopaths she was incarcerated with on a daily basis, the only individuals she could stomach could be counted on one hand. And, excluding Friedman, found in the last two rows of Lischak's classroom.

College, well, college is different. If Grace wanted to start afresh, she could do it here, where nobody has ever scrawled mean things about her on the walls, or called her a dyke, or knocked over her things on purpose. But she has no desire to do that. She likes who she is, she knows what she likes, she knows who her friends are, and she is not looking for more.

Even so, somehow she finds herself collecting a handful of people who interest her, or at least with whom she can carry out intelligent conversations.

She meets Sophie on the first day of Linguistics. The professor, a Ph.D. from Yale (a fact he states numerous times in his introductory speech), is giving the run-down on the proper etiquette of rescheduling exams when he says, "**A**, you must tell me at least a month in advance if you are unable to write the exam. And **two**, any medical excuses short of having a limb amputated will not be accepted." At this point, Sophie puts up her hand and offers to teach him the alphabet, and the next class, when Sophie tries to sit down next to Grace, Grace does not tell her that the seat is taken.

Ben is a Poli Sci major, a survivor of Hanover Academy, and the first in four generations to fail to get into Oxford. His second love is international relations, his first is international cuisine, and when he combines the two, he comes up with recipes that make the entire History department weep. Once in a while, he invites Grace over for a slice of Socialist Cake and a lengthy discussion on the bastardization of ethnic cuisine by North Americans.

Monica is from Taiwan by way of Montreal, a true separatist at heart, and will end up wanted by the Chinese government in the near future. She keeps kosher, celebrates the Eucharist, observes Ramadan, prays to Kuanyin, and is, according to at least two of her religions, destined straight to hell.

Andre plays violin at the Conservatory, but most people don't see that. Most people never look past his face, which is tattooed with thin lines that look like scars. He says his "pleases" and "thank yous" in a soft trace of a South African accent, and he apologizes to everyone, even when Grace tells him those people don't deserve it.

So, these are Grace's people. They are good people, and they stick together, knowing that good people are hard to come by. Grace isn't the one for crowds, but it is always amusing when Ben and Sophie begin fighting over where to eat dinner. Anything Tex Mex is a sorry excuse for people who can't handle real Mexican food, and P. F. Chang's is considered the ninth circle of hell.

When she needs to pick a fight, Monica is readily available for an exchange of verbal insults; when she needs some quiet to think, she goes to the library with Andre, where they sit across from each other and read in silence.

Nevertheless, they are not a close-knit circle. Grace knows that there are too many things they keep from one another, too many things they don't talk about. They don't talk about the way Sophie's hands tremble when she's strung out on her medication, or the way Andre sits down on the bus and mothers pull their children away from him.

Grace knows, and they all do, that they are only each other's second-best. There are few people you can share you secrets with, people you can put near your heart and trust that they won't break it. Grace has already found them. They are her first-best, and they are enough.

Grace likes her new friends to the best of her ability, and they keep each other sane in the midst of totalitarian professors, histrionic roommates, and the barbaric New England winter. College sucks, but Grace has her first-best, and she has her second-best, and for now that's all right.

o o o o o


	4. 4 of 11

**Notes:** Written at four in the morning. I'm on a feckin' roll. For the record, I have nothing against Marlowe, Eliot, Yeats, or Browning. I dislike Sappho for Greek-related reasons, and I really think Emily Bronte should have stuck to prose.

o o o o o

Grace signs up for her Poetry workshop as a joke, and within two weeks of class, she realizes that it _is_ a joke. The class itself is not so much a workshop as it is group therapy for a cluster of angry poets and bored slackers. Grace can probably find higher functioning people in a psychiatrist's waiting room.

Granted, there are a couple of students whose work is fairly decent, some of whose poems Grace actually enjoys, but for every one of these, there is usually one or more of the following:

1.) a Sylvia Plath/Avril Lavigne wannabe, prone to writing poems about the moon and/or menstruation;

2.) a lovelorn teenage male who is either striving to be the next e. e. cummings or desperately needs his keyboard fixed;

3.) a stoner with pupils dilated to the size of nickels who probably confused poetry with pottery and registered for the course by mistake.

While her fellow classmates write soul-baring poems that give too much information about their sex lives and early childhood traumas, Grace mostly writes parodies of other poems. She pokes fun at Sappho, ridicules Marlowe, and mocks Emily Bronte to such a point that one of the Sylvia Plaths asks Grace if she has anything personal against Bronte. Grace doesn't; she just thinks Bronte should have stuck to ill-fated romances on foggy moors.

Grace likes her professor enough. Dr. Willis genuinely seems interested in teaching her students, and Grace respects her for that, even if she doesn't believe creativity could be contained and taught like _monkey see, monkey do_. Willis is careful with praise and criticism, and never outright says anybody's poetry is crap, though sometimes Grace thinks she should. Perhaps she's just phoning it in, the way Grace herself is doing, eager to get the semester over with and never again have to analyze a poem that has more punctuation than it has words.

One day, after Grace presents a parody of _The Hollow Men_ (she has nothing against Eliot; she _likes_ Eliot, but liking something always compels her to make fun of it), Willis asks to see her after class. Some people take Eliot way too seriously.

"I want to talk to you about your poems," Willis says, and Grace bristles in reflex.

"If you want to tell me that they suck ---"

"They don't suck. They're quite good, actually, though the piece today hit a little close to home. But you can write better than that. You _should_ write better than that. You should write something that isn't so removed from yourself."

Okay, if Willis says anything remotely close to "writing from your heart" or any of that shit, Grace is dropping the course, credits or no credits.

"You want me to turn into one of those Sylvia Plaths?"

"I want you to write poetry that is poetry, and not just words."

Maybe this is a good time for Grace to point out that she never does anything people want her to do. But Willis backtracks herself and says, "It's just a suggestion, Grace. You don't have to take me up on it. And please, tread lightly on Yeats."

Grace sits in an empty classroom later that day, notebook laid across her knees, and attempts to write while Sophie, in the background, unscrews the pencil sharpener from the wall. Poetry that is poetry. What the hell does that mean?

Grace doesn't _really_ write poetry. She scribbles stuff down on scraps of paper, scrunches them up afterwards, and usually tosses them into the trash. Except for that one time Joan got another one of her crackheaded ideas and found her poem while looking through the Dumpster.

Grace writes because it's cheaper than therapy (which she doesn't believe in anyway, because Joan spent six weeks with a shrink and she's still as crackheaded as always) and slightly more cathartic than free-form swearing. And she doesn't like what she writes; she doesn't like seeing her feelings on paper, so ugly and naked and raw between the blue lines of looseleaf.

So she's not going to do any of this just because her teacher told her to. She keeps up writing her usual poems, and she tries to ignore it when Willis looks at her, a little disappointed. The problem is that Willis is the first good teacher Grace has had since forever, and there is a part of Grace that doesn't want to let her down. Dammit, life was so much easier when she hated everybody.

One day, Grace has a mini-breakdown after having to deal with too much Caroline, and emails Willis a copy of _Sewer Walking_.

Two days later, Willis again asks her to stay after class and hands back the copy of her poem, with notes and suggestions in green. _Good_, Willis has written, and Grace pretends that she doesn't care.

Grace works on a few more poems for her end-of-term portfolio. Since she doesn't have to share these in class, she decides to mix things up. It is probably one of those momentary lapses in judgment she will regret later, but at the time she feels brave enough to trust her own feelings.

She writes more about Adam and paper boats; she writes about Joan and the way she lights up the world through her bizarre blunders; she even writes about Luke, almost emulating Browning --- Robert, not Elizabeth. Her poem about Luke is similar to _My Last Duchess_, but with more science and less bloodshed.

She doesn't write about her mother, for many reasons she cannot explain. She does not want toexorcise her anger through words. Or maybe she is afraid her mother will taint this too, the way her mother has done with almost everything else in her life.

When she finishes, she feels sick to her stomach. She is proud, but scared, and she needs some ibuprofen to get rid of a pounding, post-poetry migraine.

It is still unbearably frightening to see the ebb and flow of her words on paper. But it is also exhilarating, the way falling and flying are really the same.

o o o o o


	5. 5 of 11

**Notes: **This one is a little post-modern. And if the style is all wonky, it's because the stupid document manager won't let me preview. As usual, feedback, chocolate, and sexual favors are appreciated.

* * *

**TRANSCRIPT OF EVENTS OCCURING AFTER UNSUCESSFUL LAUNCH OF OPERATION RETURN FRANK **

PERSONS INVOLVED:

Jia Xin Lin ("Monica")  
Sophie McCallum ("Sophie")  
Grace Polk ("Grace")  
Benjamin Lindsay Stetler-Musters ("Ben")  
Andre Don'tknowhislastname ("Andre")

TIME: 9:05 PM

LOCATION: Basement of Engineering Building

* * *

Grace: Turn off that damn thing, Ben. This so isn't the time for Spider Solitaire.

Ben: I'm not playing Spider Solitaire.

Monica: He isn't. He's typing out everything we're saying. Hey, you spelled my name right.

Ben: Wasn't that hard. Andre, what's your last name?

Sophie: Your middle name's Lindsay?

Ben: Shut up, it's a family name, okay?

Grace: Can we focus on getting the hell out of here?

Monica: I'm focusing. There's no way out. Do you see a window? Do you see a door? One that isn't locked?

Sophie: I have a bobby pin if any of you want to jimmy the door open.

Grace: Aren't you the expert criminal around here?

Sophie: Well, yeah, but this isn't an episode of _The O.C. _

Monica: And they didn't manage to open the door anyway. They had to crawl through an air vent.

Ben: Like we're really going to fit through an air vent.

Andre: Should we start looking for an air vent?

Sophie: This is so not how I wanted to spend my Saturday.

Grace: Dude, we wouldn't be here in the first place if you hadn't stolen Saint Francis.

Sophie: Hey, I wasn't the one who wanted to return him. I was happy to keep Frank in my room. I loved having Frank in my room. He used to watch over me with all this sage and wisdom in his eyes.

Grace: He's a block of concrete.

Sophie: Monnie!

Monica: Grace, leave her alone, okay? I told her to return Frank. Of course, I told her to put him back in the religious studies department but she didn't listen to me, which is why we're stuck in the fucking engineering building.

Andre: Why do you even have an engineering building? Your school is only famous for its liberal arts.

Ben: The Cornell rejects come here.

Sophie: I thought it was the MIT rejects.

Ben: No, the MIT rejects go to Cornell.

Grace: Well, I guess we've all learned the moral of this story. Cornell rejects come to our school, and we should never return anything we steal.

Monica: Grace, I usually find your sarcasm to be somewhat amusing

Grace gives Monica death glare.

Sophie: I don't think you're supposed to put these actions into the transcript.

Ben: Bite me.

It's his transcript and he shall do whatever he wants.

Monica: but we can't afford to be bickering right now. They're watching us. They want us to turn against each other. We have to stick together.

Ben: Who's watching us?

Monica: The people who run this place. Possibly the FBI. The CIA. God.

Sophie: Well, if the FBI is watching us, I hope Agent Mulder will come and let us out.

Ben: I was actually hoping for a Sydney Bristow type.

Monica: Laugh all you want, but it's true. Haven't you guys ever watched _Big Brother_?

Grace: This is just fantastic. I'm stuck in a room with four psychopaths.

Andre: Ben, does your computer have internet access? Can you email someone and ask them to find us?

Ben: That is brilliant, Andre. Let me try.

Ben: Fuck, _fuck_, no internet service. In the fucking engineering building, of all places.

Sophie: So what do we do now?

Grace: Wait in passive resistance until we die. That's one option.

Ben: I had that one in mind. Which is why I'm writing this all down. So whoever finds us will know exactly what happened. Sort of like an unopened letter to the world.

Grace: The world will delight in finding out that Sophie has a compulsive stealing habit, and that Monica suffers from paranoia.

Monica: And that Ben's middle name is Lindsay. Don't forget that.

Sophie: Hey, Ben, can you change my name on this thing?

Ben: Why?

Sophie: In case we die here and what not. I want to sound more interesting. Put me down as Sophocles.

Ben: All right.

Grace: Sophocles?

Monica: Sophocles?

Sophocles: Yeah.

Ben: Does anybody else want to change their name?

Nobody else wishes to change his or her name. Time passes. Room grows hot. Hypothesis: room is beside boiler room? Hypothesis #2: Engineering building gets better heating system than buildings for arts classes. Blatant favoritism on university's part. Must inquire into the matter and possibly sue. If not dead, of course.

Ben: Is it just me, or is it getting really hot in here?

Monica: I bet they're trying to sweat us out. Or make us get all hot and bothered and force us to have, like, a group orgy. And then they'll take pictures and blackmail us.

Grace: This paranoia thing is getting insane. Even for you.

Monica: Hi, pot! I'm kettle!

Sophocles: I don't care. I'm not having a group orgy.

Andre: You know what we need? Something to distract us.

Grace: From the fact that we're trapped in a closet with a tropical climate?

Ben: Yeah, I'm hungry. Any of you got food?

Monica: Here. Goldfish crackers. Also . . . Reese's Pieces. Don't look at me like that, I was a Brownie. They drilled it into our heads. Always be prepared.

Grace: Typical. Brainwashing children at an early age. Damn cultists.

Ben: Ew, these are pizza-flavored goldfish! Why do they keep raping and pillaging the sacred memories of my favorite childhood snacks?

Grace: Crass commercialism by corporate morons. Pass the candy, dude.

Sophocles: Here. I don't eat peanut butter.

Monica: What's going to happen when the food runs out?

Sophocles: Well, I watched this episode of _CSI: Miami_, where there were these three college guys. They were stranded in the middle of the ocean with no food, right? So two of them killed the third one and ate him.

Grace: Resorting to animal instincts, are we? Should we have a vote over who sic we should kill and eat first?

Monica: Democracy's a crock. You know that, Grace.

Grace: You really have no concept of irony, do you?

Sophocles: I vote Ben.

Ben: Hey, I'm on your side. I'm changing your name back.

Monica: This is so _Lord of the Flies_. Which is what they want! We have to stay as a team against the common enemy!

Ben: I find it increasingly difficult to understand why I'm friends with you people.

Grace: _A_-fucking-_men_.

Monica: It's easy for you to say. Your ancestors weren't killed by communists.

Grace: Neither were yours. Dude, you were born in Winnipeg.

Sophie: We're not really going to die here, are we?

Andre: Of course not.

Sophie: 'Cause it really wouldn't be so bad. I mean, at least we're not alone. I've got you freaks around.

Monica: And Frank.

Sophie: And Frank.

Monica: He happens to be the patron saint against dying alone.

Grace: You couldn't have stolen the patron saint of locksmiths instead.

Sophie: I change my vote to Grace.

Ben: I'll change your name back.

Sophocles: Thanks.

Andre: We need a game to distract us.

Ben: How about Truth or Dare?

Grace: No.

Monica: No.

Sophocles: No.

Grace: Everyone lies.

Monica: And nobody ever does the dares.

Ben: Fine. I'll play Spider Solitaire then. _By myself_.

Andre: What will be the first thing you do once we get out of here?

Monica: Seriously?

Andre: Seriously.

Monica: Go to the bathroom. I really need to pee.

Grace: Destroy the lock on that stupid door.

Ben: Call my lawyer if they try to arrest us for breaking and entering.

Andre: No, I mean something important.

Ben: Legal representation is important.

Andre: Okay. Suppose we're all going to die here tonight --- which we're not, but let's just say that we were. And then suddenly somebody frees us and we're given a second chance to life. What's something important that you're going to do?

Monica: Well, I'd probably develop Lazurus syndrome. I mean, I'd be all used to the fact that I was dying and then BOOM, I get to live the rest of my life. What the hell am I gonna do?

Andre: I think. I think we should all do something that scares us once we get out of here.

Sophocles: Like watching _Chitty Chitty Bang Bang_?

Grace: _Chitty Chitty Bang Bang_?

Ben: It's a scary movie.

Monica: You know what else is a scary movie? _A Little Princess_. I used to have nightmares that my mom would die and my dad would serve in the army and I'd have to work as a slave for my school principal.

Andre: No, guys, I mean something more personal. I think we should all make ourselves do something that really scares us.

Sophocles: Why does it have to scare us?

Andre: Because once we do it, it wouldn't scare us anymore. We'd be brave. We won't have it hanging over our heads.

Ben: I hate it when you get all philosophical.

Silence. Humming of machines next door. Possible indicator of water boiler about to explode? Do not suggest this possibility to Monica.

Monica: I could start reading for Lit class.

Grace: What?

Monica: I've never ever read a single book for Lit. I buy the audio books online and listen to them. How do you think I got through _Jane Eyre_?

Sophocles: Whatever. Reading is not scary.

Monica: Have you seen my hardcover copy of _Ulysses_?

Andre: I got it. Monica, you have to tell your parents that you're not actually in premed.

Ben: Your parents think you're in premed?

Monica: My parents still think I'm a _virgin_. But yeah, they think I'm in premed. I'm going to give them a stroke when they find out I'm majoring in religious studies. They'll think I'll end up having to work at a bubble tea place like my brother.

Grace: Well, you can't hide it forever. They always find out. Asses.

Monica: But I can try. Okay, this is stupid. I don't want to do this anymore, Andre.

Andre: You don't have to if you don't want to.

Monica: Oh, don't give me that look. How can I not do it when you give me that look?

Sophocles: I could eat peanut butter.

Ben: How is that scary? You got food allergies?

Sophocles: No. I'll tell you, but you can't feel sorry for me, okay?

Grace: I don't feel sorry for anybody.

Monica: Yeah. What she said.

Sophocles: Change my name back. I want to be myself for this.

Ben: You're so annoying.

Sophie: Okay. Well. The reason why I don't eat peanut butter is that when I was about six years old, my mom got up and left one day and I was, like, stuck in the house alone. There was nothing in the house to eat except a jar of peanut butter, so I ate that. Scooped it out with my fingers and ate the whole jar. It lasted me for three days until somebody found me. After that, I didn't eat peanut butter anymore. Makes me throw up.

Sophie: Oh, come on, guys. You promised you wouldn't feel sorry for me. Look, I'm okay. I really am. I'm over it. You know what, I'm going to go sit beside Andre. Sitting beside Andre always makes me feel better.

More silence. Close game of Spider Solitaire. Grace looks at wall. Monica lies with eyes closed. Sophie sits in Andre's lap. He puts his hands on her head, almost as though he is giving her a benediction.

Monica: My eyes are not closed. And stop adding adjectives into the transcript.

Ben: They're not adjectives. They're similes.

Sophie: I thought of something scary for Grace to do.

Grace: No. No way. I'm not playing this stupid game.

Sophie: You are such a sore sport.

Ben: Let's hear it first.

Sophie: Grace has to tell someone that she loves him. Or her. And she has to mean it. And the word "fuckface" must not be involved.

Monica: Fuckface?

Sophie: Yeah, like, she can't go up to Caroline and be all sarcastic and say, "I love you, fuckface."

Grace: This is stupid.

Sophie: Chicken.

Grace: How can I be chicken when what you're asking me to do isn't remotely frightening? I mean, _Chitty Chitty Bang Bang_ is scarier than that.

Andre: I think it's scary.

Monica: How?

Andre: It's scary because you don't know if that person is going to say it back. And even if he or she does, it's still scary because you said it. And if you mean it, that makes it real. And it's scary to look at your own feelings sometimes, because it reminds you that you're not as tough as you think.

Monica: Andre, do you secretly work for Lifetime?

Grace: Leave Andre alone.

Ben: So are you up for this or not, Grace?

Sudden noise coming from door. Door opens and enters surprised night janitor ("Janitor").

Janitor: What are you kids doing here?

Sophie: Group orgy.

Monica: We'll be on our way.

Sophie: Bye, Frank.

Monica: Bye, Frank.

Ben: Bye, Frank.

Grace: Bunch of freaks.

Janitor: My name is Ralph.

**END OF TRANSCRIPT**

**CONCLUSION: OPERATION RETURN FRANK V. SUCCESSFUL. **

* * *

Ben sends the document to Grace a few weeks after Operation Return Frank. By then everyone has almost forgotten about it, Grace most of all. Being locked in a room with four nutcases and the patron saint of Assisi is another one of those memories about college that she plans to bury deep within the sewers of her psyche, and let her defense mechanisms take over.

Nobody has mentioned anything about the "scary something's" they were all supposed to do. Sophie still steers clear of peanut butter, and as far as Grace knows, Monica's parents are still convinced Monica is well on her way to Harvard Medical School.

But seeing the document again (Ben has, just for fun, named it grouporgy.doc) reminds Grace of what she was asked to do. And for some weird reason she cannot quite explain, she wants to do it. She hates being scared, but then she is always the first one in line to ride the roller coaster at the county fair. When she was around seven years old, she and Adam watched all the Nightmare on Elm Street movies alone in the basement of his house, with the lights turned off and the curtains drawn shut.

She stares at the computer screen for a solid half-hour, until her eyes start to water. Finally, ignoring the little voice in her head that says, "You are a complete idiot for doing what you're about to do. I'm telling you, don't do it," she saves Ben's document under a new name, and uploads it as an attachment to her email.

Before sense and reason can kick in, she types in Luke's email address and sends the message off into cyberspace. She figures that this is the closest she will ever get to saying it to him.


End file.
